Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke duke of, Marquess marquess of Douro, Marquess marquess of Wellington, Earl earl of Wellington, Viscount Wellington of Talavera and of Wellington, Baron Douro or Wellesleybyname Iron Duke ( born May 1, 1769 , Dublin, Ire.—died Sept. 14, 1852 , Walmer Castle, Kent, Eng. ) British army commander during the Napoleonic Wars and later prime minister of Great Britain (1828–30). He first rose to military prominence in India, won successes in the Peninsular War in Spain (1808–14), and shared in the victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo (1815).

Wellington twice reached the zenith of fame with a period of unexampled odium intervening. By defeating Napoleon at Waterloo he became the conqueror of the world’s conqueror. After Waterloo he joined a repressive government, and later, as prime minister, he resisted pressure for constitutional reform. False pride, however, never prevented him from retreating either on the field or in Parliament, and for the country’s sake he supported policies that he personally disapproved. In old age he was idolized as an incomparable public servant—the Great Duke. Reaction came after his death. He has been rated an over-cautious general and, once, Britain’s worst 19th-century prime minister. Today there is widespread appreciation of his military genius and of his character as an honest and selfless politician, uncorrupted by vast prestige.

Early life

Wesley (later, from 1798, Wellesley) was the fifth son of the 1st earl of Mornington. Too withdrawn to benefit from his Eton schooling, he was sent to a military academy in France, being, in his widowed mother’s words, “food for powder and nothing more.” At the age of 18 he was commissioned in the army and appointed aide-de-camp to the Irish viceroy. In 1790–97 he held the family seat of Trim in the Irish Parliament. At 24, though in debt, he proposed to Catherine (Kitty) Pakenham but was rejected. Arthur abandoned heavy gambling to concentrate on his profession. As lieutenant colonel of the 33rd Foot by purchase, he saw active service in Flanders (1794–95), learning from his superiors’ blunders. After failing to obtain civil employment, he was glad to be posted to India in 1796.

In India he adopted a regimen of abstemiousness and good humour. The arrival of his eldest brother, Richard, as viceroy enabled him to exploit his talents. He commanded a division against Tipu Sultan of Mysore and became governor of Mysore (1799) and commander in chief against the Marāthās. Victories, especially at Assaye (1803), resulted in a peace that he himself negotiated. All the successful qualities he later exhibited on European battlefields were developed in India: decision, common sense, and attention to detail; care of his soldiers and their supplies; and good relations with the civilian population. Napoleon was unwise in later writing him off as a mere “Sepoy general.” Wellesley returned to England in 1805 with a knighthood.

Wellesley’s new assignments were disappointing: an abortive expedition to HanoverHannover, followed by a brigade at Hastings. But he felt he must serve wherever duty required. One duty was to marry his faded Kitty in 1806; another was to enter Parliament in order to repel radical attacks on his brother’s Indian record. He spent two years in Ireland as Tory chief secretary. On a brief military expedition in Copenhagen (1807), a welcome break, he defeated a small Danish force. When in 1808 the Portuguese rose against Napoleon, Wellesley was ordered to support them.

Victory in the Napoleonic Wars

Wellesley did not intend to be “half beaten before the battle began”—the usual effect on continental armies of Napoleon’s supremacy. With “steady troops” he expected to master the French attack. His “thin red line” of British infantry did indeed defeat Gen. Andoche Junot’s columns at Vimeiro (August 21), but the arrival of two superior British officers prevented a pursuit because they preferred to sign the unpopular convention of Sintra, whereby Junot’s army was repatriated. Public outcry brought about the court-martial of Wellesley and his colleagues. Though acquitted, Wellesley returned to Ireland as chief secretary. After the British evacuated Spain, however, he persuaded the government to let him renew hostilities in 1809, arguing that Portugal could still be held, a decision that was crucial to Europe. Landing at Lisbon, he surprised Marshal Nicolas-Jean de Dieu Soult, captured Oporto, and chased the French back into Spain; but a joint Anglo-Spanish advance on Madrid failed, despite a victory at Talavera (July 27–28). Though rewarded with a peerage for his offensive, Viscount Wellington retreated with his greatly outnumbered force to his Portuguese base, defeating Marshal André Masséna at Bussaco on the way (September 27, 1810). He had secretly fortified the famous “lines of Torres Vedras” across the Lisbon peninsula. Masséna’s evacuation of Portugal in the spring of 1811 and the loss of Fuentes de Oñoro (May 3–5) triumphantly justified Wellington’s defensive, scorched-earth policy and confirmed his soldiers’ trust in him. He was nicknamed “nosey” by his men, and “the beau” by his officers, for his slim five feet nine inches, the perfectly cut civilian clothes he preferred to wear, his wavy brown hair, and brilliant blue eyes.

His slowly growing army was not strong enough to capture the Spanish fortresses of Ciudad-Rodrigo and Badajoz until 1812. Then, having defeated “40,000 Frenchmen in 40 minutes” at Salamanca (July 22), he entered Madrid (August 12). His siege of Burgos failed and his army retreated again to Portugal, from which it was launched for the last time into Spain in May 1813. After a dash across the peninsula, he brought the French to bay at Vitoria, routing them and capturing all their baggage (June 21). This glittering prize was too much for the victors, who let the French escape into the Pyrenees, while Wellington denounced his drunken troops as “the scum of the earth.” The victory at Vitoria gave impetus to the European alliance against Napoleon, and Soult’s initial success in the Pyrenees could not prevent Wellington from taking San Sebastián and Pamplona. Whey When dry weather came, Wellington invaded France, crossing the river lines one after another until on April 10, 1814, he stormed into Toulouse, thus ending the Peninsular War. (Four days earlier Napoleon had abdicated.) Already marquess and field marshal, he was now created a duke, with the nation’s gift of £500,000 and later of Stratfield Saye in Hampshire to keep up his position.

With Napoleon on Elba, Wellington was appointed ambassador to the restored Bourbon court of Louis XVIII. In February 1815 he took the place of Viscount Castlereagh, the foreign secretary, at the Congress of Vienna, but, before delegates could finish their peacemaking, Napoleon had escaped, landing in France (March 1) to begin his Hundred Days. The victory of Wellington and the Prussian field marshal Gebhard Leberecht Blücher on June 18 at Waterloo established the Duke as Europe’s most renowned—if not most jubilant—hero. “I hope to God that I have fought my last battle,” he said, weeping for the fallen. “It is a bad thing to be always fighting.” His hope was fulfilled. As commander in chief during the occupation of France, he opposed a punitive peace, organized loans to rescue French finances, and advised withdrawal of the occupying troops after three years. For these policies he won the gratitude of the peace congress, returning home in 1818 with the batons (symbol of field marshal) of six foreign countries.

Role in the cabinet

Wellington’s experiences abroad prevented him from ever becoming a party politician. Though he joined the Earl of Liverpool’s Tory cabinet as master general of the ordnance, he exempted himself from automatically opposing a subsequent Whig government: “a factious opposition,” he argued, “is highly injurious to the interests of the country.” His identification with the party of law and order, however, increased when postwar discontent boiled over in the Peterloo Massacre at a Manchester demonstration for parliamentary reform and the Cato Street Conspiracy, a plot to murder the Cabinet. The popular George Canning succeeded Viscount Castlereagh as foreign secretary in 1822. Despite Canning’s antipathy to the congress system, Wellington himself overbore George IV’s personal objections to him, believing that the system was by now unshakably established. When Canning extricated Britain from its European commitments, Wellington was left to bitter self-reproach. His own diplomatic failures at the Congress of Verona (1822), at which he vainly sought to heal dissension among the European allies, and in Russia (1826) increased his chagrin. Straightforward to a fault, Wellington was unsuited to carrying out Canning’s subtle policies, but he gained respect abroad as an honest man.

In 1825 Wellington turned to Ireland’s problem, formulating it as a basic dilemma: political violence would end only after the Catholics’ claim to sit in Parliament, known as Catholic Emancipation, had been granted; yet the Protestant establishment, or ascendancy, must be preserved. He worked privately at a solution, by which a papal concordat to ensure at least minimum control of Catholic clergy would be the precondition of Emancipation. When Canning, an unqualified Emancipator, became prime minister in April 1827, however, Wellington felt that Protestant ascendancy was in jeopardy. He and Robert Peel headed a mass exodus from the government, Wellington also resigning his command of the army. This action was interpreted as pique at the King’s choosing his rival for prime minister. In denying the allegation, Wellington rashly asserted that he, a soldier, would be “worse than mad” to consider himself fit for the premiership. After Canning’s death that August, he resumed his army command. Within five months Canning’s successor, Viscount Goderich, had given up the task, and on January 9, 1828, the King summoned the Duke of Wellington.

Years as prime minister

The Duke’s aim was to achieve a strong and balanced government by reuniting the Tory Party. Having reluctantly resigned again as commander in chief, he invited the Canningites, headed by William Huskisson, to serve, while dropping the ultra-Tories as incompatible with his policy of moderation. With the right wing thus alienated, a chasm began to open on the left. The opposition’s demand for extensive reforms met with sympathy from Huskisson’s group. Wisely, the Duke retreated, first on a church issue, himself reforming the Test and Corporation Acts that penalized Nonconformists, and again on a Corn Law (prohibiting importation of cheaper foreign grains) question, introducing a more liberal reform than he and the agricultural interest desired. Shortly afterward, however, he collided head-on with the Huskissonites on parliamentary reform; the whole group resigned in May. A further crisis immediately arose during the by-election in Clare, Ireland, where William Vesey-Fitzgerald, Huskisson’s ministerial successor, defending his seat, was defeated by Daniel O’Connell, the Irish Catholic leader. The defeat of Vesey-Fitzgerald, a popular pro-Catholic, carried an alarming moral for the Duke: until Emancipation was granted, no Tory would win in southern Ireland. There might well be civil war. In August 1828 Wellington therefore undertook the most exacting political duty of his career—the conversion of George IV, Peel, who was now leader of the Commons, and a majority of Tories to Catholic Emancipation, a reform that they had hitherto regarded as anathema. It took six months of indefatigable persuasion behind closed doors to win over the King. Peel’s position was equally problematic—as a publicly declared Protestant, he clung to the idea of supporting Emancipation only from the back benches; but finally Wellington’s patience and Peel’s generosity prevailed, and he agreed to continue leading the Commons. A number of ultra-Tories defied to the last Wellington’s order to “right-about face,” but the majority of the party obeyed. So in April 1829, though the Tories were split, Catholic Emancipation became law, the Duke’s greatest political victory, with melodrama being added by his fighting a duel with an abusive ultra-Tory, the Earl of Winchilsea.

Wellington has sometimes been criticized for inconsistency. It now appears that he was merely secretive in not taking the public into his confidence much earlier. His willingness for some form of Emancipation by 1825 might with advantage have been disclosed.

A demand for further changes, already stimulated by Wellington’s own achievements, was powerfully reinforced by countrywide hardship during 1829–30 and canalized by Charles Grey, the 2nd Earl Grey, the Whig leader, into fresh moves for parliamentary reform that would allow industrial towns like Birmingham to have a voice in Parliament, in place of pocket boroughs owned by the nobility and gentry. Expression of dissatisfaction with Wellington’s fatalistic attitude toward poverty and unemployment was made possible when the accession of William IV in 1830, following George IV’s death, provided a general election. France’s bourgeois revolution that same year—the July Revolution—greatly encouraged British reformers. Though Wellington’s ministry survived, it was weakened, and Huskisson’s sudden death frustrated tentative plans for reconciliation. Wellington saw parliamentary reform not as a panacea but as constitutional suicide. A fortnight before the opening of Parliament he wrote a letter to a friend denouncing reform as ruinous and disclosing his unalterable decision to oppose it. He staggered Parliament on November 2 with an uncompromising declaration against any reform whatever. A combination of reformers and vengeful ultra-Tories defeated him on the 15th. Peel made him resign the next day. He was succeeded by Grey.

As a soldier Wellington had shown uncanny ability in guessing what lay “on the other side of the hill.” Through lack of political imagination, however, he saw revolution beyond the hill of reform—“revolution by due course of law.” For this delusion he was deservedly called reactionary.

Last years

In opposition, the Duke proceeded to thwart Grey’s attempts to get a reform bill through the Lords. Wellington’s windows were twice smashed by radical mobs, and his iron shutters helped form the image of an iron duke. The titanic struggle culminated in the crisis of May 1832, which promised to end like the July Revolution of France. The King refused to create enough new peers to overwhelm the hostile Lords, Grey resigned, and Wellington failed to recruit an alternative government. Faced by tumultuous deadlock, Wellington, still opposing reform, then retreated for the sake of the country, persuading his followers to join him in absenting himself from Parliament until the Reform Bill became law in June. He was mobbed nonetheless by an angry crowd on Waterloo Day. “An odd day to choose,” was his only comment.

The Duke’s abstention had saved the Lords, and, as long as he led the Tory peers, he continued to steer them away from fatal clashes with the Commons. Whenever possible he supported the King’s government. In 1834 William IV dismissed the Whigs by a political coup, summoning the Duke to form a ministry; but the 65-year-old duke replied that Peel must be prime minister. This abnegation, most rare in a politician, did not go unappreciated. He served under Peel as foreign secretary (1834–35) and as minister without portfolio (1841–46). He also served as chancellor of Oxford, constable of the Tower, lord-lieutenant of Hampshire, and elder brother and later master of Trinity House, not to mention Queen Victoria’s father figure. He made a mistake in holding the chief command of the army throughout his last 10 years, because he was past initiating the reforms that were later sorely needed. Nevertheless, he showed a touch of his old genius in 1848, when his calm handling of a threatened Chartist rising prevented any violence. Thanks to his again ordering the peers to “right-about face,” this time over the Corn Laws, he enabled Peel to abolish them. Wellington retired from public life after 1846, though he was still consulted by all parties. Apsley House, his town residence at Hyde Park Corner, was known as No. 1 London. As lord warden of the Cinque Ports, he died at Walmer Castle, his favourite residence, from a stroke in 1852. He was given a monumental state funeral, the last heraldic one in Great Britain, and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Personal life

The phrase “retained servant of King and people” and variants of it were used repeatedly by the Duke of himself and aptly suggest the self-dedication for which he is chiefly honoured. Many amusing personal peculiarities in clothes and correspondence, together with a gift for repartee, made him a “character” as well as a hero. “Publish and be damned!” was his famous retort to a blackmailer. His marriage was not happy: Kitty both feared him and worshipped him to excess. She died on April 24, 1831. Of his two sons, the elder edited his latest Despatches and the younger produced the grandchildren to whom he was devoted, as he was to all children. His intense friendships with Harriet (the wife of Charles) Arbuthnot, Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts, and others showed that he could have been happy with a clever woman; perhaps he was happiest of all, however, in the camaraderie of his staff—his military family. Some modern historians have objected to the posthumous title Iron Duke on the reasonable grounds that he was neither cold nor hardhearted. Yet he himself often boasted of his iron hand in maintaining discipline. His engaging simplicity and extraordinary lack of vanity were expressed in a favourite saying, “I am but a man.”